To design a Product in Bangkok is a challenge when the product needs special technical skills. To find manufacturers and artisans in Thailand is not an easy process. To find online is easier but that is tapping in to the whole  world wide web. The following is a recount of how a product does not become real.

The end of the year is approaching and every company wants to give new year gifts to their clients. A token of appreciation, and something for the client to remember us by. A few months ago we had sat down and come up with many ideas on to what was the perfect gift from Fenn to the special clients we have. Everyone on the team came up with many different ideas, but it was narrowed down to a very elegant glass replica of one of Fenn’s Projects. It seemed perfect. The elegant glass replica had beauty, design and signified Fenn.

We all set out to look for the glass artisans and glass company’s that could realize the gift for us.  Images, drawings, sketches, technical drawings were sent. It was a flurry of emails and phone calls,  to quickly have the gift in our hand in order to send it out before the frenzy of the New Year.

A few  types of companies were contacted, glass, gift, resin, and acrylic. Choices had to be made, glass was the first option as we wanted something clear, white and sophisticated. Resin, was opted out as it is an environmental hazard and as designers we would like to limit our ecological footprint.

But it was not easy as Thai companies did not understand the product’s technical drawing. Slowly, these few companies were ticked off our list and we settled for the 1 or 2 glass companies that  had the glass quality and specifications we required.

We waited for price quotations for X number of gifts but the companies could not give any ideas of the quotes and this tug of war continued and it was realized that they did not understand the simple technical drawings that was provided to them. We decided for one of our own architects to make a 1:1 scaled version of the gift, thus to help the companies to visualize the project in the scale that we had envisioned.

The company sent in their technical team to have a look at the model. They examined the model and it seemed as though the model would soon be a reality.

As time went by, the company had decided they could not understand the model and to creating by glass  was a bigger investment then we had thought of .

The idea to create the replica was very much in line with  what a gift should be about, something special, unique and precious. But to be able to recreate an idea like this requires a lot of time and technical know how for the manufacturer as well.